Month: April 2010

The building season has begun. As Moze posted recently, the Honorarium List is out. As one of this year’s honorarium artists I thought I’d give a little insight into how one comes to the conclusion to take on the monumental project of building The Temple for Burning Man.

A Dusty picture by Rick Egan

It all began Sunday last year on the playa. Sunday for me has always been a day of reflection. Last year I woke up in a very reflective mood as the dust storm was raging…”Why on earth do I come out to this god forsaken hole”… <cough, cough> …”Why do I insist on making art in this inhospitable place”. Just as my pity party was in full swing my favorite art partner Rebecca Anders finds me and suggests we go on an OPA tour (Other Peoples Art tour). She had been having a similar morning of woe and needed to get away. Joined by Don Cain, of DSC, we went on a deep playa excursion to see what treasures we had missed during the week while we were installing Fishbug.

It’s that time of year again, when just like that up goes the first page of fantastic ART that will grace the playa this year.

Beautiful, sublime, large and small, we have it all from Diamonds in the Sky, an Aeolian Pyrophonic Hall, to large expansive spaces and Infinitarium gardens sure make our Metropolis proud. There are Intersections and Monorails to nowhere, a Subway, even a Towering Inferno and various areas of aural and fire spectacular.

This year we have a Minaret in the Keyhole, a human scale Mant Farm, a new Temple of Flux, a Kinetic Cab Company and the long awaited return of Doctor Megavolt.

Needless to say, with this small glimpse of what is to come, Black Rock City will be hoppin’ this year.

I’ve just mentioned a small bit of what is in store so CHECK it all out for yourself and get your inspiration on for what YOU will be bringing out to Burning Man this year.

Greetings from New Orleans, where it’s not quite hot yet, the French Quarter Fest is raging, and all around the Lower Ninth Ward, the idea of sustainability and locally-grown vegetables is sprouting up like a mess o’ collard green seedlings.

Please take a minute to read the repost below and vote for a friend of Burners Without Borders NOLA — Jenga Mwendo — to win the $5k necessary to restore the blighted cottage next to our neighborhood community garden and transform it into an education center (and storage). It’ll be your good deed for the day!

Jenga and Mama Patsy cleaning up the garden in the early days. That's the cottage in the background. Git 'r dun!

From Jenga:

Greetings! On behalf of the Backyard Gardener’s Network, the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association Garden Committee and the entire Lower Ninth Ward community, I ask for your help to win the Cox Conserves Heroes contest. Please go here and vote for me, Jenga Mwendo! Cox Conserves Heroes is a contest that awards an “environmental hero” $5000 to his/her charity of choice. If I win, the money will go towards renovating a blighted cottage next door to our community garden for use as a storage/education garden center. I am the only contestant representing a project in the Lower Ninth Ward, the community devastated most by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Vote Now! Spread the word! Vote as many times as you want!! Thanks!

UPDATE: In case you didn’t notice the publish date for this post, it was indeed an April Fool’s prank. There WILL NOT be waste collection at Burning Man. Burning Man is the largest Leave No Trace event in the world, thanks to each and every citizen of Black Rock City packing out everything they pack in. And this tall order is truly an art form. Learn more.

Despite the Burning Man Project’s ongoing negotiations with the Nevada Board of Health (NBH), the NBH has recently decided to expand and enforce the Nevada Solid Waste Disposal Law (Nevada Administrative Code 444.5486) as it pertains to standards of operations for temporary mass gatherings such as Burning Man. As a result, it’s become necessary for the Burning Man Project to institute solid waste pick-up and curbside recycling throughout Black Rock City, starting in 2010.

Chapter 444 of the Nevada State Environmental Statutes, Regulations, and Orders, pertaining to sanitation, reads as follows:

NAC 444.5486 Removal of solid waste. (NRS 439.200)
1. The operator of a temporary mass gathering shall remove all solid waste from the site of the gathering within a reasonable time after the end of the gathering.
2. If, during the operation of a temporary mass gathering, the health authority determines that an accumulation of solid waste is a nuisance:
(a) The health authority shall notify the operator of the gathering; and
(b) The operator shall, within a reasonable time after being notified, abate the nuisance.
3. As used in this section, “nuisance” has the meaning ascribed to it in NAC 444.594.
(Added to NAC by Bd. of Health by R071-03, eff. 10-22-2003)

NAC 444.594 “Nuisance” defined. (NRS 444.560)
“Nuisance” means anything which is injurious to health, offensive to the senses, or an obstruction to the free use of property, and thus interferes with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property.
[Environmental Comm’n, Solid Waste Mgt Reg. S 1.12, eff. 9-21-77]

In its recent decision, the NBH has chosen to consider Black Rock City’s growing waste disposal situation a “nuisance” as defined in NAC 444.594. Thus the Burning Man Project has been forced to reallocate a significant portion of its annual event budget originally earmarked for art grants to create and manage a fleet of BRC MOOP Collection Mutant Vehicles (MCMVs) that will make daily rounds to collect garbage throughout Black Rock City, starting at 6am each day of the event. These MCMVs will of course be designed with a creative whimsicality befitting Burning Man.